Not really in the sense of use with iphone, but in use with any phone.

Get a new number from google that you can have forward to your other numbers.

Basically a number you can give to people that you have more control over for call screening rather then just giving out your real number. Especially in situations where you will likely not speak to the person again: craigslist deal, etc..

Google Voice was previously GrandCentral before Google bought them out. We love it. We actually have three GC/GV numbers. One we use for our personal number, one I use for business and one we give out to places that are likely to make calls or sell off for telemarketing.

A Google Voice number provides you with a central number. No need to hand out your cell phone number. If someone calls your GV number you can have it ring your cell phones and home phone simultaneously. In its default configuration Google Voice will intercept the call and ask the caller to state their name. If you have placed them in your GV phone book already it will skip the request to state their name. It will then call your phones. When one or all of the phones are picked up you'll get a greeting "Call from Mike Smith" and gives you the option to answer, send direct to voicemail, screen the message being left or answer and record the call. Whoever selects to take the call will get routed the call and the rest of the phones will stop ringing.

If you have GV take a message Google Voice will record the voicemail and then transcribe it. It will then, at your option, email you a transcription of the message. It can also text you a message saying message from XXXX followed by the text of their transcription.

If you choose to take the call you can also transfer it. If you press * the other phones you have set up will start ringing. Someone else can screen and pick up. I use this to go from home to cell and the other way.

We don't have a wired landline and we haven't for many years. With Google's official roll-out they added some features. I purchased a 2-line SIP box to drive the wired phones still in the house for both my business and personal numbers. Google will allow a SIP service Gizmo5 to take calls as well. The service is completely free and the quality is excellent. When I pick up on the house phones and take a call the audio quality rivals wired telephone quality. I ordered a Linksys SIP box out of China as the same box purchased domestically is tied to a particular VoIP carrier. Be advised though that the SIP box set-up is very complicated and, unless you're comfortable with highly technical things, this may not be something you want to try unless you have someone who can help you. One set up it's indistinguishable from having a wired phone in the house.

You can set hours you'll take calls as well. Have different answering messages for different classes of callers in your phone book (such as family, friends, work). You can choose to have different classes of callers sent directly to voicemail and the phone never rings.

The Googlevoice number can also take SMS messages. This is handy for us. My wife has the original iPhone with the 200 text messages. I have a 3G and don't have any text plan at all. So, a text coming in gets re-texted to her but emailed to me.

There's also a one-click Do No Disturb that allows you to silence all incoming calls.

You can also have Google Voice generate an outgoing call and mask it with your GV number so nobody ever gets your cell phone number.

All of this is absolutely free from Google and Google has said it will remain that way with the exception of International calls. Domestic incoming and outgoing calls are all free. International outgoing calls have a very low per-minute rate.

There's also a Google Voice application for the iPhone that allows you to listen to your messages and perform all the calling functions.

Google Voice was previously GrandCentral before Google bought them out. We love it. We actually have three GC/GV numbers. One we use for our personal number, one I use for business and one we give out to places that are likely to make calls or sell off for telemarketing.

A Google Voice number provides you with a central number. No need to hand out your cell phone number. If someone calls your GV number you can have it ring your cell phones and home phone simultaneously. In its default configuration Google Voice will intercept the call and ask the caller to state their name. If you have placed them in your GV phone book already it will skip the request to state their name. It will then call your phones. When one or all of the phones are picked up you'll get a greeting "Call from Mike Smith" and gives you the option to answer, send direct to voicemail, screen the message being left or answer and record the call. Whoever selects to take the call will get routed the call and the rest of the phones will stop ringing.

If you have GV take a message Google Voice will record the voicemail and then transcribe it. It will then, at your option, email you a transcription of the message. It can also text you a message saying message from XXXX followed by the text of their transcription.

If you choose to take the call you can also transfer it. If you press * the other phones you have set up will start ringing. Someone else can screen and pick up. I use this to go from home to cell and the other way.

We don't have a wired landline and we haven't for many years. With Google's official roll-out they added some features. I purchased a 2-line SIP box to drive the wired phones still in the house. Google will allow a SIP service Gizmo5 to take calls as well. The service is completely free and the quality is excellent. When I pick up on the house phones and take a call the audio quality rivals wired telephone quality.

You can set hours you'll take calls as well. Have different answering messages for different classes of callers in your phone book (such as family, friends, work). You can choose to have different classes of callers sent directly to voicemail and the phone never rings.

The Googlevoice number can also take SMS messages. This is handy for us. My wife has the original iPhone with the 200 text messages. I don't have any text plan at all. So, a text coming in gets re-texted to her but emailed to me.

There's also a one-click Do No Disturb that allows you to silence all incoming calls.

You can also have Google Voice generate an outgoing call and mask it with your GV number so nobody ever gets your cell phone number.

All of this is absolutely free from Google and Google has said it will remain that way with the exception of International calls. Domestic incoming and outgoing calls are all free. International outgoing calls have a very low per-minute rate.

There's also a Google Voice application for the iPhone that allows you to listen to your messages and perform all the calling functions.

What the benefits of google voice? Just curious before I give away the invite......

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I forgot to address this. Think twice before giving away the number. This is the current rush like gmail addresses were years ago. I had multiple gmail invites back when it first started and ebay'ed many of them getting roughly $75 each for them, sometimes more.

I just looked on ebay and there are GV auctions up for hundreds of dollars per invite. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have put in requests for a Google Voice number. You are apparently on the first selection list on the GV rollout. If you're not going to use it get something out of it.

I want this service, however... I'm really curious how the number selection works.

Who chooses the area code? Is there even an "area" code or does everyone have a Google area code? How does it work?

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I am assuming selection now was just like it was when it was GrandCentral. It's a drill-down by area code. You select an area code, then a city and then get a number list to choose from. My 'local' number was available. It's a number in my town with only a population of 20,000. My number I give for potential telemarketers is in the nearby city of a couple hundred thousand. My business number is in a more distant city of millions. My business number has repetition to it to make it easy to remember for business purposes. That was the nice thing about being able to select a specific number from a list.

The speculation is that because Google bought up a huge amount of installed but unactivated fiber optic back in the dot com era that they are eventually going to start their own phone company. That's speculation but considering they've been making movement in that direction it could be the case.

Right now Google has bought out all available numbers from Level 3, a national networking provider. My numbers are all from Level 3 and that was from a few years ago. These are the pool of numbers that the selection emails will be given.

I just got my google invite code the other day. How you pick you number is pretty easy. You can either put in a zip code or an area code and it will search numbers in that number set. You can also put in numbers/letters you want your number to be. For example, I can search all numbers that have 1115 in it. Or that have the word ADAM in it.

The best part is that you can search using a combination of the 2 methods. For example, I can search just ADAM and it will give me numbers that have ADAM in it from all different area codes, or I can search within a specific area code.

I use it with my iPhone as well. I purchased the program GV Mobile (search for it on iTunes) and it allows me to do anything with my second number that I can do with my main number, and the app displays it in a nice little interface that looks and acts exactly like the iPhone's. Even Visual Voicemail for your Google Voice number works with that app. You can send SMS's, view your call log, everything....it's like having a second phone line tied to your iPhone!

I got a google voice invite but what good is this service? Any one using it with the iphone?

What the benefits of google voice? Just curious before I give away the invite......

Click to expand...

google voice seems awesome from what Ive heard
but I don't want it...YET

Google is soon bringing the ability to PORT NUMBERS, so you don't have to get a new one. This, along with a few other new features on their way, will make it something I am VERY interested in. I'd say, use the invite so that once the new stuff comes, you can use it right away

cellphone companies are in trouble now

since I don't have any hands on experience with it, and so can't help you THAT much

heres an article outlining what it can do, and the current advantages/disadvantages of google voice

I've been a GC user since alpha days, and the product really works ( would hope so, this is telco switch tech from the 90's) but I am really surprised (okay, not actually too surprised) that Goog didn't do anything to it since it was acquired 2.5 years ago. There is just so much one could do.

YES, they finally are going to allow number portability, which is a good thing and I think they have a bank of 1 million numbers nationwide. You know, GOOG will now get federal funding for being a telco! Something is just wrong with that.

ANYWAYS, the one real downside to trying to use it fully integrated, either with a GOOG number or your ported number is that things like MOBILE to MOBILE calling within a carrier are lost. If you are hit from your GOOG forward, it doesn't matter if your F&F are on AT&T, it came from GOOG. Same is true if you use the initiate features for GV from your cell phone as an example.

Everything else is great, I use the number as a work number so I can be targeted whereever I am.

ANYWAYS, the one real downside to trying to use it fully integrated, either with a GOOG number or your ported number is that things like MOBILE to MOBILE calling within a carrier are lost. If you are hit from your GOOG forward, it doesn't matter if your F&F are on AT&T, it came from GOOG. Same is true if you use the initiate features for GV from your cell phone as an example.

Click to expand...

Actually it depends on how you set up Google Voice/Grand Central. If you have it pass the Caller ID information to you for the call rather than presenting your GV/GC number as the caller it will provide you with the mobile-to-mobile advantage. Unfortunately, any outbound calls through GV/GC and any calls made by other people on the AT&T network are going to get hit with minutes. So, you can take advantage of mobile-to-mobile but the other end will always get stuck with the bill.

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